NTT Docomo CTO Seizo Onoe said the Japanese telecom operator is planning to deploy a 5G NR commercial system by 2020.
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NTT Docomo will start the 5G interoperability testing and trials in Japan in the first half of 2018.
The Japanese telecom giant is aiming to keep the 5G trials with the first 3GPP 5G NR specification that will be part of Release 15 or the global 5G standard that will use both sub-6 GHz and mmWave spectrum bands.
Qualcomm Technologies and Ericsson are the technology partners in the 5G trials.
The 5G trials will operate in mid-band spectrum at 4.5 GHz, as well as millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum at 28 GHz, showcasing the unified 5G NR design across diverse spectrum bands.
NTT Docomo will gain from 5G NR technologies to efficiently achieve multi-gigabit per second data rates at significantly lower latency and better reliability than today’s network.
“This important 5G standard-based trial collaboration will demonstrate the compliance to 3GPP and support an accelerated commercialization of the global 3GPP 5G specification,” said Ulf Ewaldsson, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Ericsson.
The 5G trials will utilize device prototype from Qualcomm Technologies and base station solutions from Ericsson.
The 5G trial will include 5G NR operation at 4.5 GHz, which allows a large bandwidth resulting in high data rates and good capacity with reasonable coverage to address the large number of envisioned 5G use cases.
The 5G trial will showcase advanced 3GPP 5G NR technologies including Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antenna technology, beamforming techniques, adaptive self-contained TDD, scalable OFDM-based waveforms to support wider bandwidths, advanced coding and modulation schemes.
Meanwhile, test and measurement company Keysight Technologies and Samsung Electronics today announced a technology collaboration on 5G development and testing to support early operator trials.
“Our customers are looking for a wide range of millimeter wave over-the-air solutions with superior performance to bring 5G applications to market,” said Kailash Narayanan, vice president and general manager of Keysight’s Wireless Devices segment.
